


On boxes, and the proper ways to open them

by Beleriandings



Series: Just this once (everybody lives) [2]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Friendship, Gen, M/M, casefic, telepathic roadtrips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25676278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: (AU: Just this once)Jack's unconscious, under the influence of an unknown alien force that's preying on his mind. Gray has an idea for how to help him, and repay some of the debt he owes. But to do it, he'll need the help of a certain archivist.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Series: Just this once (everybody lives) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1826248
Comments: 19
Kudos: 59





	On boxes, and the proper ways to open them

**Author's Note:**

  * For [princessoftheworlds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessoftheworlds/gifts).



> Happy birthday to [princessoftheworlds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessoftheworlds/pseuds/princessoftheworlds); Nik I hope you enjoy this! Note: this is set in the same AU as my story [Just this once](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21618322/chapters/51549379), and I don't...know if it'll make much sense at all without having read that? Or at least it is very much enhanced by having read that fic and contains large spoilers for it, so I would very much recommend reading that first.  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> .....As a summary though, the pertinent details of the plot are that:  
> \- The whole team survives Exit Wounds (with a little help from the Doctor)  
> \- The Doctor also helps dampen Gray's aggression towards Jack using his telepathy, and now Gray lives in the Hub basement.  
> \- Jack and Gray have at this point partially mended their relationship by using Adam's box to share their memories with each other and come to understand each other a little better (they're working on it!)  
> \- Gray and Tosh are tentative friends after semi-accidentally going on an adventure together.  
> \- That's probably all you need to know! For reference, this is set in the time skip between chapters 11 and 12, but refers mostly to the early chapters. It also alludes to stuff that happens in the Big Finish audio Broken.
> 
> Content warnings: past implied suicide attempt/suicidal ideation, violence, and mild body horror. (And I promise this is much more heart-warming in tone than those make it sound!)

The trouble began, as it so often did, with the sound of the cog door alarm, and raised voices echoing in the Hub.

“-Bring him in! Put him in the medbay, I’m gonna have to monitor his vitals-”

Gray peered around the corner at the sound. It had been a quiet morning, with Jack, Owen and Gwen out on a routine Rift retrieval mission, Toshiko happily tinkering with some device at her workbench. Ianto had gone out to get them all lunch for when the others got back, Gray remembered.

He was still out, but the others had come back, Owen and Gwen carrying an unconscious Jack between them.

He was just in time to see Toshiko drop her screwdriver to the floor, flinching slightly; these days, Gray did sometimes come up into the main space of the Hub, but usually only when it was just him and Jack or Toshiko. After the incident with Emmeline and her pursuers, Gray trusted Toshiko almost as much as anyone in his strange new home; the fact that she clearly trusted him too, despite their rough beginnings, he’d found made him glow with a kind of warm pride that he hadn’t felt in many, many years.

And Javic – no, Jack. It would take a while, but he was getting better at remembering, at working his brother’s new name through his head - had been his saving grace in all this. While the rest of them were wary of Gray, especially early on, Jack had always been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Putting Gray’s past mistakes behind him resolutely, his belief in Gray’s capacity to be better unshakeable. Gray knew he’d never be able to make Jack understand the gratitude he felt, its depth and breadth keeping him grounded, helping him start to build up something he could call a life.

But still. He didn’t really know the others very well at all. Living in the lower levels of the Hub he saw them most days, of course, but he could tell they were on edge around him, a stranger in their midst.

And so, despite his curiosity as Gwen and Owen brought his brother in and Toshiko ran to help too, Gray hung back. Wary, watching from the door to the medbay.

He could see a slice of the room though; they had laid Jack down and Owen was listening to his chest with a stethoscope, frowning. “Normal” he said. “Breathing, heart rate… all seem fine.” He frowned, peeling back one of Jack’s eyelids and shining a pen light into his eye. “Unresponsive, though. It’s like he’s in a coma, or...”

“What _happened_?!?” said Tosh.

“It was this… thing, that came through the Rift” said Gwen grimly. “I don’t think he even meant to touch it, but-”

But at that moment Ianto came running, feet clattering against the metal grating, windswept and breathing hard. He ran through the doorway where Gray was watching, barely sparing him a second glance. “Came as soon as I got your message” he gasped all in one breath, running down the stairs to Jack’s side. He was biting his lip, unable to hold back the small gesture of worry. Ianto looked at Owen. “What’s wrong with him?”

Owen was frowning. “Well, physically? Absolutely nothing, apparently.”

Ianto raised an eyebrow, indicating Jack’s obvious state of unconsciousness.

Owen sighed, hunching his shoulders and sticking his hands in his coat pockets in an aggrieved sort of way. “Not a bloody clue.”

“There was this… thing” volunteered Gwen. “All white and glowing.” She held up her hand, making a small circle with the thumb and forefinger. “About this size, sort of… fuzzy.”

Ianto blinked. “What?”

“Yeah” she said, looking as though she was about to cry. “He didn’t even mean to touch it. It just flew up into the air, and got absorbed right through his skin.” She gestured. “Then he just collapsed...”

Ianto blew out his breath, looking upset as Tosh came down to stand beside him.

“Is it safe to touch him?” she asked.

Owen shrugged. “Well, Gwen and I did: had to, to bring him. And neither of us’ve collapsed on the floor. So… yes? Probably?”

Before he’d even finished his sentence, Ianto had Jack’s hand clasped in both of his.

Gray watched as Toshiko laid a hand on Jack’s shoulder, bumping up against Owen’s side. “If it’s not physical, could it be something… I don’t know, neurological? Psychic, even? Something controlling his brain. We can get out the mind probe...”

“Good idea” said Owen.

An hour later – with Gray silently watching everything, unable to tear his gaze away but not quite able to come nearer either – they’d made almost no progress.

Toshiko was frowning down at the readings from the machine wired to the metal cap covering Jack’s head. “These energy spectra suggest some sort of telepathic block, but the signal’s so bad… it’s like… there’s static, or noise in the data.”

“Bloody hell, you’re right” said Owen. “Looks like fog blocking the sensor.”

“The sensor’s fine” said Tosh, frowning. “Whatever it is, it’s in Jack’s brain. Not outside.”

“And you haven’t seen anything like this before?” said Ianto, pale with worry by Jack’s side.

She shook her head. “I’ve already done a database search to see if it’s something we’ve seen before, but there’s nothing. I’ll widen the parameters and run it again, but it’ll take a while...”

Ianto nodded. “Gwen, the thing that did this… tell me again exactly what you saw?”

“I didn’t really see it properly. Only caught a glimpse” she said, looking upset. “But what I saw was this little… blurry white thing, floating in the air in front of Jack. Then it… I don’t know, it was like it flew right into his chest…” she shook her head. “Next thing I knew he was unconscious. That was when I called Owen over to bring him back here.”

“...Okay.” Ianto nodded thoughtfully. “While the database search runs, I’ll start going through the old paper records in the archives by hand. See if there’s anything amongst the stuff that hasn’t been digitised yet.”

Owen nodded, giving Ianto a piercing look. “And hey, uh. Calm down, Ianto, okay? We’ll fix this.”

Ianto glared back for a moment, and it seemed he was about to say something cutting. But he seemed to change his mind at the last moment and gave Owen a tense nod instead, shoulders drooping a fraction as he let go of Jack’s inert hand and went striding off to the archives. Gray drew back a little into the shadows as he swept past the archway, receding footsteps loud in the stillness of the Hub.

Back in the medical bay Owen blew out his breath, turning back to the others. “Well… best get going then.”

* * *

That had been four hours ago. During that time there had been three angry outbursts, and a couple of testy remarks hurled across the Hub. Ianto hadn’t been seen once since he’d left for the archives.

Gray had spent most of it pacing the upper gantry. Above him he could hear Myfanwy rustling and chittering a little as she settled in for the night. He liked Myfanwy; she didn’t require or expect anything of him. Sometimes when he was alone in here, or after having woken from a nightmare with the walls of his basement room pressing in close around him, he’d come up and just sit by her nest and let his mind wander. But today she wasn’t as much of a distraction as he’d hoped.

He wished there was some way he could help. But without Jack here, he felt almost exposed; the others didn’t trust him, he knew. Even Toshiko, when he’d spoken to her by her computer terminal earlier – careful not to alarm her this time – had told him there was nothing more he could do but wait.

And so he was waiting. But it didn’t mean he had to like it. He had tried going back down to his room in the lower levels, trying to go to sleep for a while, but it had been a shallow slumber full of shreds of strange, unsettling dreams. Not uncommon for him, but still.

When he’d finally given up and gone back to the main space of the Hub he found it almost empty, but for Toshiko packing up her things at her desk.

“You’re going?” he asked her.

She sighed. “It’s nearly two AM, and we haven’t found anything. The others have already gone home; the plan is to get a few hours’ sleep and start again early tomorrow. I’ve set another database search and an analysis of Jack’s readouts from the mind probe running, so those should be done by then.” She hesitated. “We had a bit of a job convincing Ianto to leave… he looked exhausted, poor thing. Eventually Gwen managed to persuade him to go get some rest, and that Jack would still be here in the morning.”

Gray nodded. “Yeah. That’s true.”  
She raised her eyebrow, catching and holding his gaze as he tried to look away. “What about you? Will you be okay here?”

For a moment he was thrown by her concern for him. “Oh, yes of course” he assured her. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

She looked at him for a moment more, then nodded and turned away, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “See you tomorrow then. Try and get some sleep, okay?”

He smiled, very faintly. “Goodnight, Toshiko.”

“Goodnight, Gray.”

And a moment later she’d disappeared through the cog door.

As it trundled closed behind her, Gray paced back and forth across the main space for a moment, then padded down the stairs to where Jack was lying on the bed that had been wheeled in, wired up to several machines that blinked and pulsed softly in the quiet. Gray watched his brother lie still, breathing shallow but even. He looked like he merely was asleep, but Gray knew better.

He allowed himself a moment to look down at his brother’s face; how strange it was to think about how there had been a time when all he’d thought about was getting the chance to hurt him, to make him pay.

He sighed, forcing himself to turn away from Jack, to walk back up the stairs and back to the main space.

It was both familiar and strange, being in the Hub on his own. Of course, it wasn’t that different from most nights since Gray had lived here, materially at least; Jack was often away at Ianto’s flat, leaving Gray alone here, a level of trust that he was well aware he shouldn’t take for granted. The times when Jack was here, it wasn’t like they spent all their time together; often Ianto stayed over in Jack’s bunker, and Gray usually gave them their space in the morning.

Gray had to admit that he didn’t really know what to make of Ianto. Except for the fact that Jack loved him dearly; that much was clear to anyone. But the part of Jack that loved Ianto wasn’t one that Gray could recognise from his memories of his brother Javic. He had no reference point for the aspects of Jack’s life that had grown in the time they’d been apart, no trail to follow back to the brother he’d known. Ianto was one of those aspects, and Gray didn’t really have anything to go on, other than that Ianto was soft-spoken but sharp, meticulous and well-turned out at all times. Closed-off, but, by all appearances, had utterly captured Jack’s heart.

Gray frowned, putting it from his mind to think about later as he walked through the echoing, cavernous space, low-power mode bringing all the lights and monitors to a mere background flicker. The fuller glow from the medical bay. His gaze lingered on the door again, remembering the day he’d first come here.

He’d shot Toshiko, and Owen had knocked him out with a punch to the jaw, and the Doctor had been inside his head and everything was different afterwards… his memories of that day were fuzzy, all pain and noise and furious adrenaline pulsing through his veins, but he remembered that clearly enough. Now he’d got to know Toshiko, and with all he’d changed since then, the memories hurt like a bullet tearing through his own flesh.

Not that the scene in the medical bay now was much less painful. He only wished there was something he could do about it. After all Jack had done for him, after that night when they’d used the strange, inlaid box to telepathically look into each other’s heads and understand each other a little better, and-

Oh.

 _Oh_.

The idea came to Gray in a flash, sudden and frightening and triumphant.

Well, better to try something instead of nothing he thought, vaguely considering it as something that Jack might have said.

On silent feet, he began to make his way down to the archives.

He’d never been down here before, for all he had lived in the Hub these past months. He felt a flicker of irrational fear, wondering what would happen if he got lost; from what Jack had told him, the lower levels were like a labyrinth.

But after a while he came to a door. Not a thick bulkhead like some of the ones in the lower levels, nothing you needed a code for, but an ordinary wooden door.

It was slightly ajar, with a dim glow shining through the crack.

Gray edged forwards, suddenly wary as he heard a minute sound on the other side of the door. He knew how to be utterly silent if he wanted; it was one of the things he’d taught himself. He padded forwards, pressing his eye to the crack. And saw-

At that very moment the door was wrenched open, and Gray found himself staring down the barrel of a pistol, hearing the click as it cocked. He tensed, heart speeding up as he was suddenly faced with Ianto, wild-eyed and aiming a gun at his head. Gray’s first impulse was to run, or to try to wrestle the weapon out of his grasp, and for a moment he felt his hands twitch into fists, ready to fight.

Then an instant later his brain caught up, and he put his hands in the air.

At the same moment Ianto began to lower his gun, clicking on the safety once more and rolling his eyes. “ _What_ are you doing here?” he asked, sounding vaguely irritated.

Gray stared at him. “I live here.”

Ianto frowned, lowering the gun to his side and looking awkward. “No, I know, I mean...” he gestured around the cramped office space, surrounded by filing cabinets. “In the archives. I thought Jack set you up a living space on floor minus three, room twelve C?”

Gray opened his mouth and closed it again. He didn’t actually remember the number of his room himself; he just thought of it as _his room_. It was better than the early days when he’d been in the cells, at any rate. “Yes. But I had an idea for-” he frowned, remembering the conversation earlier. “Wait, what are _you_ doing here? Toshiko said you’d gone home already.”

Ianto visibly winced. “Well, I came back” he said, a little defensive.

“How? I didn’t see you come in the main door.”

“...I know other ways into the Hub.”

Gray frowned. The way he’d said it came with the tacit assumption that he wouldn’t be sharing them. “Okay” he said. It was only then that he realised how different Ianto looked; normally he was fastidiously neat, but now his hair was a mess, standing up on one side, his eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion. His tie was loosened, waistcoat unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Behind him on the desk were stacks of papers, files lying open and spilling their contents across the table.

Given what he’d said earlier, then, it wasn’t too difficult to put the pieces together. “You came back to carry on researching?” he said.

Ianto’s face hardened. “Jack shouldn’t suffer any longer than he has to.”

Gray opened his mouth and closed it again, then nodded. “Um, about that” he said. “I had an idea. Something that might be able to help him. It’s in the archives.”

Immediately, Ianto was on guard. “...How were you going to get it then? You don’t have access.”

“I, uh, hadn’t thought that far ahead” admitted Gray. “...But you’re here. And _you_ have access.”

Ianto stared at him for a second, then sighed deeply, holstering his gun and sitting down on the edge of the desk. “Oh, go on then. What’s this idea?”

* * *

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this” Ianto was muttering to himself as he typed in his access code. “I was angry at Jack last time he used this thing, you know. We had a whole argument about it.”

Gray squinted at him, half his mind trying to memorise the access code – all but impossible, with how fast Ianto had entered it - the other focusing on Ianto’s face to try to understand what he was thinking. “...Are you backing out?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean _that_.” He sighed as the light on the storage locker keypad flashed, beeping out a tone as it swung open, muscles cording in his forearms as he lifted out the lead-lined containment box. He closed the locker again, hefting the box and turning to Gray. “Well. Let’s get this over with, I suppose.”

And that was how a few minutes later they were standing on either side of Jack in the medical bay, Gray watching as Ianto opened up the containment box, carefully lifting out the object inside.

It was exactly as Gray remembered it; a finely-made wooden box, inlaid with geometric patterns, complex and beautiful.

“ _Paradox sandbox_ ” muttered Ianto, turning it this way and that and looking at it contemplatively.

“What?”

“Nothing” he said, setting it down on the table, and looking back down at Jack’s unconscious form. “So, how do we use it?”

At this Gray frowned. “Um. Before, he just opened it and it… started?”

Ianto raised an eyebrow, suppressing a smile. “Oh, no key in the ignition…?”

“Well, I don’t know!” said Gray, unable to keep the snap out of his voice. “The person who did it last time is currently unconscious, so...”

Ianto sighed. “Okay, yes, point taken.” He picked up Jack’s limp hand in his, laying his fingers against the side of the box. “Let’s try this, then. Put your hand on it too.”

Gray nodded, slowly extending his hand to touch the box, over Jack’s. He watched Ianto’s eyes linger for a moment on the place where their fingers met, before putting his own palm on the other side.

Then, with a deep breath and a nod to Gray, Ianto opened the lid.

Just like last time, as soon as he did the world changed. Reality was wrenched away, and for a moment Gray found himself adrift in an in-between place, neither here nor there. And then, after an endless spinning moment he was _somewhere_ again.

A very familiar somewhere. He drew in a breath as he felt his feet sink into the sand, soft above the tideline. Before him the ocean stretched out, lit by the noon sun which beat down with familiar heat against his skin.

He swallowed down the lump that came to his throat; he hadn’t realised how much he’d missed the sun.

He turned his head and saw Ianto standing beside him, eyes squinted against the brightness as he looked all around him. “Where are we?”

“...Home.”

Ianto’s mouth opened for a moment. “ _This_ is where Jack’s – where you’re from?”

Gray nodded. “The Boeshane Peninsula.”

“...Oh. I didn’t… I mean, he hadn’t...”

“He never told you?”

Ianto blinked a few times, shaking his head before kneeling down, taking a handful of sand and letting it flow through his fingers, apparently fascinated. “It feels so real.”

“It’s a memory.”

“...Yours, or Jack’s?”

Gray frowned at that. “I don’t know” he admitted, looking around. He almost expected to see his brother running towards them across the sand, but the beach was empty except for the two of them. Even the sea was quiet, with not a fishing boat or a skimmer in sight.

He frowned, realising a moment later there _was_ something out there; something moving, coming in to shore fast.

Apparently Ianto had noticed it at the same time. “What’s that?” he said, squinting at the horizon.

“It looks like… mist, or a cloud.” It was moving too fast for that though, blank and white and monolithic. And there was no wind that Gray could feel. He shuddered involuntarily. Sometimes when _they_ came, he’d been warned as a child, they’d use the sea fog to shroud their ships until it was too late for anyone to flee. When Gray had been taken it had been in bright sunlight, he’d just been too slow – _and Javic had let go of his hand_ – but still...

Ianto looked doubtful. “Is that... normal?”

“No.” The mist was closer now, moving far too fast. Gray felt terror, wild and irrational, sluice down his spine. He was beginning to edge further up the beach before he realised what he was doing.

Ianto had noticed his alarm, tensing at the shoulders. “What is it? Is it dangerous?”

Gray just shook his head; whatever that mist was, it was nothing from his own memories, he knew. Not that he had much idea _what_ it was; only a deep, intuitive understanding that he had to get away from it.

“Hey!” Ianto called after him as he began to run. He caught up a moment later; Gray didn’t dare look back to see how close the mist had come. “Hey, can you explain to me-”

But he broke off, as Gray finally turned around, just in time to see the mist reach the shoreline and begin to sweep up the beach. His eyes widened and he found himself frozen like an animal in the face of a hunter as he saw it heading towards Ianto’s back. Ianto’s eyes were wide, and he was just able to turn around before the mist swept over them, enveloping them in smothering, blank white.

Gray had no idea what he’d expected it to feel like. But in the event, it didn’t feel like anything at all. Not in the sense that he felt the same as before, but more that his senses themselves felt dampened, sight and sound and touch and his sense of temperature all stripped away to virtually nothing, replaced by an encompassing, staticky numbness. The space all around them was blank white, the same in every direction.

But at least there _did_ seem to be some sort of space around them. Ianto stared at him, voice bizarrely dampened. “What is this?”

“I don’t know!” said Gray, panicking slightly. Even the beat of his heart and the sound of his own breathing were muted. “It wasn’t like this last time!”

Ianto breathed out, hands fisted at his sides as he began to pace. “Okay, list of questions… first of all, where are we? Second, where is Jack? And third and most importantly, how do we find him and get out of here?”

“I don’t _know!_ ” said Gray again, louder this time.

“Okay, okay, I was only asking” said Ianto, rather tartly. He seemed to consciously force his voice to a softer register. “Look, this was your idea, so-”

“You’re the one who went along with it!”

Ianto put his hands on his hips, glaring at him. “Oh, this is my fault?”

“Well, it’s not _my_ fault.”

Ianto scoffed, turning away. He ran his fingers through his hair, shaking his head and laughing bitterly. “I should’ve waited until the morning for this. I could’ve taken Gwen, or Tosh or Owen with me...”

Gray sighed, forcing down his rising frustration. “Ianto.” Ianto looked up at the sound of his name, surprised, and Gray realised he’d never spoken to him by it directly before. He tried to hold his gaze, in the way Jack was so good at, trying to copy the way he caught people’s attention and made them listen. “I promise, all I want is for Jack to be okay.” He scrutinised Ianto’s face, eyes narrowed. “That’s what you want too... isn’t it?”

Ianto stared at him for a moment, raising an eyebrow. “...If this is some kind of shovel talk it’s already the most surreal one I’ve ever had” he muttered, before turning and looking around again.

Gray frowned, not quite understanding what Ianto meant. He thought about it for a moment, before his mind went back to standing beside a pile of turned earth. “Oh” he said, dread and shame coursing through him. “Look, if you want me to apologise for back then-”

Ianto blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Um, I thought, when you mentioned shovels… seeing as I tried to have him buried in the ground...” he tailed off. “Oh. No?”

“...Don’t worry about it” sighed Ianto. “Probably a step too far for now, in terms of slightly outdated early twenty-first century cultural tropes.”

“Mm” said Gray, not really understanding this either and hoping Ianto hadn’t noticed. “Listen, I meant I’ve been here before. With Jack. I know how this place works… sort of.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It kind of… takes you through your memories. Things from your past come back. Or it’s supposed to, anyway.”

Ianto grimaced. “Hmm. This is sounding like it was a worse and worse mistake with every passing-”

But he broke off as at that moment the mists began to clear, drawing back like a curtain. Revealing the place they were standing in.

Gray’s eyes widened as he recognised it immediately.

A child sat on a huge stone chair, skinny wrists bound to its arms with thick steel cuffs, head held back with a similar band of steel. The boy was about fifteen, all wide eyes and wild, matted hair and sharp angles, as a glowing brand neared the side of his face, rising up out of the floor automatically.

He heard Ianto gasp beside him as the brand touched flesh, a little smoke curling off into the air accompanied by the smell of cooking meat, but the hiss it made was drowned by the boy’s screaming, high and thin as he struggled in his bonds.

“Oh, god… is that...” Ianto managed, as the child whimpered and keened in the aftermath. His eyes kept flicking to the burn scar on the side of Gray’s face. “Is that _you?_ ”

Gray nodded slowly. “Told you. Memories.”

Ianto let out all his breath at once, wide-eyed and unable to look away as the boy let out a wounded sob, head dropping forwards.

“Come on” said Gray, abruptly; seeing this again was bothering him. “He’s not here, there’s nothing...” he gritted his teeth, old pain, old anger beginning to rise up. “There’s _no one_...”

And he pulled them away from the vision, in the way he remembered from last time. It was easier this time, as though some force was guiding them. When they emerged in a new place, Gray hissed through his teeth in frustration, recognising it immediately.

Ianto stared down at the little huddle of children in the corner of the cell, backed up against the high, smooth walls. One of them was Gray, a little younger than he had been before. Another was a girl, lying on the ground, curled up and only half-conscious, coughing and convulsing in pain. Ianto stared, pale in the dim, blue-tinged light. “Is she...”

“She died” said Gray, shortly. “You got sick in here, chances are you wouldn’t survive.” He touched the scar at his cheek again, remembering how it had got infected, how he’d been delirious for days, lost in fevers and nightmares, wishing he could just die at long last.

Ianto swallowed. “Why didn’t you fight?” he whispered, almost too low to hear. “You could have escaped, you could’ve done _something_...”

Gray turned to look at him, feeling a flare of anger. “You want to know what happened?” he snapped, making Ianto flinch in the dark. “If you fought them, they’d kill you.” He gritted his teeth, bitter. “They had so many of us, it wasn’t much to them to let one die here and there. As an example. I watched friends die like that.” He glared. “Want to see? I can take us there.”

“...No.” Ianto stared back at him for a moment, unflinching, and sighed. “Come on” he said. “We’re getting out of here.”

Gray blinked a few times. “Wait, what?”

“I said, we’re getting out of here.” He gestured to the scene in front of them. “These are your memories, but Jack’s not here. There’s no reason to look for him here.” He frowned. “And you shouldn’t be here, either.”

“I… yes, okay.” He felt a little of the tension ebb out of him, feeling rather thrown for a loop. He hadn’t expected Ianto to react like this. “Yes, you’re right.”

“Good.”

Gray sighed. “I’ll try and bring us somewhere else next time, and maybe-”

“No” said Ianto. “Let me do it.”

“What?

“Um, I think...” said Ianto, not sounding quite as certain as Gray thought he was intending to. “I can get us out of here. Better. I think I can get us to where we need to go.”

“How? You’ve never done this before.”

“That box” said Ianto. “I took Jack’s statement for the incident report last time. He said he thought it was some kind of telepathic resonator, meant to amplify empathy and create a psychic link with another person. That allows you to share memories like this…. and a lot more too probably, in the hands of an expert.” He frowned, clearly a little disturbed by the implications. “But anyway, the point is, there must be telepathic controls for this thing.”

“I never learned any telepathy” said Gray. He’d heard about it of course, had wanted to try it some day when he was a young child.

“Well, I have” said Ianto, surprising him. “Torchwood One, basic telepathic training.”

“Basic?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Ianto drew himself up a little taller, unconsciously straightening his back with a nervous laugh. “But how hard can this be, hmm? Been a few years since I used it, but I’m told it’s like riding a bike.”

“...What?”

“...Uh, never mind” said Ianto, screwing up his face, eyes closed, evidently concentrating hard on something. “Just… need to find something… to focus on… _ah!_ ”

“Ianto?!?”

But he didn’t answer as he lurched forward, gasping in pain. His hand flailed out for balance and caught Gray’s forearm. Gray had just enough presence of mind to take Ianto’s weight, before the two of them were wrenched violently out of the world and into a new place.

The first thing to come to Gray as the scene reassembled itself around them was noise; distant screaming, blaster fire, the grinding of machinery muffled by walls but clear in the background. He could smell burning plastic, and metal, and laid over all, unmistakable and heavy, the smell of blood.

They were in a windowless concrete room, lit by dim emergency lights. There were vague shapes visible through the translucent plastic sheeting that hung in layers all around, but it obscured his view beyond a few feet.

Printed on the plastic was the familiar Torchwood logo. Gray stared, confused, and then looked down to see there was blood on the floor, a chaos of footprints and splatters and trails of it.

He turned to the side to find Ianto still grasping his arm, eyes wide and mouth open in shock and pain, as though someone had struck him across the face.

“What’s-” Gray began, but before he could say more there was a scream behind him, a voice raised in anguish.

“ _Lisa!_ Oh, god, Lisa, _Lisa_...”

He whirled, ready to fight as the screaming continued, and saw-

 _Ianto_. But not the Ianto standing frozen to the spot beside him; this Ianto looked a few years younger, wild-eyed and utterly covered in blood.

He was cradling something – or some _one_ , Gray realised – in his arms, a painful-looking mass of silver metal and flesh that he clung to as though for his very life. She was screaming in his embrace, and he was screaming and sobbing, and for a moment Gray could only stare as Ianto’s hand tightened on his forearm like a steel trap.

“Lisa… oh god, somebody help me… _please!_ Lisa… I can’t...”

Her bloody hand coming up to grasp his arm. “Ianto, it hurts...”

“I… I know. Lisa, stay with me, Lisa… _fuck_ , there’s so much blood...” he was almost sobbing now. “ _Lisa_...”

And he was right, Gray saw; there was so much blood, blood sluicing from open wounds on her skin and raw flesh beneath the metal. He was wounded too, his trouser leg torn and shiny with it, a cut at his hairline bleeding into his eye. A spreading patch of red stained his shirt. But whose blood that was, Gray didn’t know.

He simply stared for a moment longer, unable to look away as Ianto and Lisa clung together in front of him. He was only pulled out of his reverie when Ianto beside him let go of his arm abruptly, turning away from Gray, from the scene before them.

“No...” he moaned, hands coming up to the sides of his head. He was gritting his teeth, effortful. “Not… here. Not her...”

Gray tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat; he couldn’t stop looking between his Ianto – _Jack’s_ Ianto – and the version of him on the floor, cradling the injured woman in his arms, rocking backwards and forwards and sobbing and screaming for help, stroking her arms and pressing kisses to the exposed skin of her face. He was making a new bloody trail as he tried to lift her – the heavy armour making the process difficult – and pull her across the room, crying as he got caught up in blood-splattered plastic sheeting.

“ _No!_ ” gritted out Ianto beside him, hands pressed to the sides of his head. A moment later, his arm shot out and grasped Gray’s again, and they were wrenched away from the scene.

And then they were back in the Torchwood Hub, on one of the lower levels; for a brief instant the dimmed lights made Gray think they were back in the real world, back where they started. But a moment’s look was enough to rid him of that impression.

The lights were red, the floor awash with blood once more; it didn’t take long to see that it was coming from the two bodies lying on the floor. One he recognised as Lisa, with her strange armoured limbs, the other was a woman he didn’t know.

Kneeling between them, screaming in agony and grief, was Ianto.

Gray turned, hearing a noise behind him; he was just quick enough to turn to see Jack and the rest of the team, guns raised. Gray’s gaze was drawn to his brother’s face; his jaw was set in grim determination, a forced, impassive mask as he lowered his gun, eyes fixed on the Ianto kneeling before him.

And then looked up again, as he realised the room was beginning to fill with fog.

When Gray turned his gaze to meet that of the real Ianto, his face was closed off too, eyes glazed with pain and shame and grief. Silently, his fingers squeezed Gray’s arm and they were gone from that blood-soaked room, the floor opening up and the scene collapsing inward around them as they were dragged down together in a whirlpool of that white blankness again, dragging them away from that blood-soaked memory.

Until finally they were sitting together against a rough wooden wall on a dusty floor, knees drawn up close to their chests. Ianto raised his eyes, giving him that look again; Ianto hadn’t wanted him to see any of that, Gray knew. He hadn’t wanted to see it himself either.

Yet Gray’s mind was spinning; it was hard to reconcile mild-mannered, restrained Ianto Jones, Torchwood Three’s archivist and maker of coffee, with that fierce and desperate young man, covered in blood and screaming out the pain in his heart. He found it even harder to reconcile either of those with the man his brother was in love with. And the look in Jack’s eyes; he shivered. Gray hadn’t seen a look like that turned towards him even back _then_ , and he never wanted to. It had only made him realise further how leniently his brother had let him off in the aftermath of what he’d done.

But he still had questions, so many questions piling up one of top of the other; he wanted to understand, wanted to ask Ianto them all. But what came out was, “Lisa. Who was she?”

Ianto swallowed, the lump in his throat bobbing above his collar. “She was my girlfriend” he said. “We worked together, at Torchwood One. That… that must be why, because I was trying to remember...” he broke off.

“...What happened?” ventured Gray. Ianto’s answer hadn’t done much to clarify things.

“There… was an attack” said Ianto, voice flat, uninflected and numb. “Cybermen. They tried to convert her, but only got halfway through. I thought, if I brought her to Cardiff, got Jack to give me a job...” he let out his breath, a bitter smile touching his lips. “Well. It didn’t work, shall we say.”

Gray bit his lip. “He killed her.”

“She was already dead” said Ianto softly. “I know that now.”

“And… and you?” he furrowed his brow, still not understanding.

Ianto raised his eyebrows. “Me...?”

“You stayed” said Gray. “I mean, you came back. And, you and him...”

“That’s the thing about Jack. He forgives” said Ianto softly, arms going about his drawn-up knees; he seemed to almost be speaking to himself. “He forgave me for Lisa, and I forgave him too. That’s all there is to say about it.”

“...Oh.”

They sat in silence for a little while longer, breaths slowing down to normal in the cramped space. A moment later Gray raised his head, aware enough to take in his surroundings. They seemed to be in a corridor, stained wooden floorboards and dirty, peeling plaster on the walls, blistered with damp. And now he noticed the smell in here; perhaps he hadn’t noticed it before, his senses still filled with the iron tang in the air in the last vision. But, he realised, it smelled of blood here too; sharp and heavy, dampness and mildew layered over it but unable to fully block it out.

At the end of the corridor was another sheet of plastic, covering the doorway at the end; Gray could see the dim silhouettes of figures moving about on the other side, hear low voices. And once again, the plastic sheeting was splashed with rusty-dried blood.

He turned to look at Ianto, still sitting with his arms wrapped tight around his knees, shoulders hunched. “What is this place?”

Ianto raised his head, opening his mouth to reply when there were suddenly voices from the other side of the plastic sheet, then a grunt and a thud; then the sound of scuffling and running feet.

Gray’s eyes widened as Toshiko burst through the plastic-covered doorway, bruised and bloodied, eyes filled with terror as she ran for her life.

He looked at Ianto. “Is that-”

Ianto sighed. “Yeah.”

“But this is your memory.”

Ianto’s eyes flicked to the room at the end of the corridor, weary. “ _Yeah._ ”

At that moment a man burst through, burly and leering, holding a butcher’s knife. “Oh, running away is it missy?” he said, yelling in the direction she’d run. “Well, if you don’t want to come back for your brave boy here, then that’s okay. My lads’ll find you soon enough.” He grinned, a horrible smile. “It’ll give us time to tenderise him before we move on to you.”

Beside him, Ianto had let out a muted sound of pain through gritted teeth, his hands pressed to the sides of his head which was bent over his knees. “I’m… sorry” he ground out. “My memories… I can still find Jack, I just need something to _focus_ on-”

Slowly, tentatively, Gray put a hand on Ianto’s shoulder.

But before he could say anything, they were wrenched away again; this time, it felt like a sickening lurch, like vertigo, time itself spinning and tilting precariously, _until_ -

Until they were deposited in a small living room, the two of them stumbling against the wall as the floor seemed to tilt and shift, gravity canting strangely. Gray braced himself against the plaster. “Why-” he began, and then he saw that Ianto was leaning against his side for balance, blank-eyed with horror as he stared across the room.

There was a small sofa, where another version of Ianto was lying sprawled out on his side, beaten and bruised and dirty, sobbing so hard the coffee table shook. This Gray noticed because the bottle on it trembled, juddering across the surface; it was some amber-coloured spirit, he thought, judging by the smell in the room. Beside it was a bottle of small white pills, spilling its contents across the table.

As he watched, disturbed by the sight, the door flew open with a bang; he was half-expecting to see Jack, but it was a woman who rushed into the room.

“Ianto! _Ianto!_ ” she dropped to her knees beside him, turning him over and cupping his face in her hands. “Ianto… it’s me.” She stroked his hair briefly, before turning to look at the table, eyes widening. “How many did you take?”

“Who’s that? Is she… your mother?” ventured Gray.

“No.” Ianto shook his head, snarled under his breath. “Mandy… bloody _Mandy_...” he saw Gray’s look, sighing. “She was someone I really trusted, for a while.” They both looked at her leaning over Ianto on the sofa. “She probably saved my life that day. ... _But_ , then Jack and I found out she was planning to sell me into slavery, so...” He laughed a little hysterically as they both watched Mandy fetch his past self a glass of water from the kitchen, helping him sit up to drink.

“Oh” said Gray, having no idea what to say to this.

Ianto still looked pained as he watched the scene in front of him. “I’m sorry” he said. “I never wanted anyone to see this.” He screwed up his face in frustration. “I just don’t know how to _find_ things in here...”

“It… it took a little practice, before” ventured Gray. “You’ve got to focus. Um… maybe if you focus on something happy? Focus on...” he frowned a little, as Ianto raised an eyebrow at him. What made Ianto happy? “...Jack. Focus on Jack, and try again.”

Ianto stared at him for a moment, giving him a look Gray couldn’t even begin to read. Then, he turned away from the scene before them and put his hand on Gray’s forearm, closing his eyes in concentration.

It was relatively quick this time, pulling them out of the world with a singing smoothness rather than a chaotic fall. When Gray opened his eyes they were in a small room, with a ladder coming up through it to a door in the ceiling, a narrow bed beside it. In the bed were two figures, snuggled together with a blanket pulled up tight to their shoulders. The closest was Ianto, with Jack behind him, arm draped lazily around him from behind under the blanket. Ianto’s eyes were half-closed, a gentle, contented smile on his face; Gray had never seen him this relaxed, had never seen Jack smile like that either. He stared for a moment, as Jack raised his head and dropped a soft kiss to Ianto’s collarbone, murmuring something too quiet to make out in his ear. But whatever it was made Ianto laugh softly, turning under the blanket to kiss him properly, hand coming up to card through Jack’s sweat-damp hair.

Gray winced, and abruptly Ianto beside him spoke. “Oh god. ...Didn’t mean to bring us here, that’s your _brother_ , I’m so sorry… I’d uh, look away from this one now...”

Gray did look away, face aflame, just as Jack dipped his head to Ianto’s neck, mercifully hidden by the blanket. Still, the Ianto with him was avoiding his eye, blushing as furiously as Gray was sure he was. Ianto raised a hand to clutch the side of his head. “I _really_ didn’t mean to bring us here” he said. “I should’ve-” but then he frowned, looking up again, past Gray’s shoulder. “Wait. What’s that doing here?”

Cautiously, Gray turned his head and looked too, and frowned as he saw immediately what Ianto meant. There was that strange white fog again, thick and swirling, incongruous in the small, warmly lit room.

“What is it?” he whispered as Ianto drew closer to him; the other Ianto and Jack, the ones from the memory, seemed to be too absorbed in each other to notice the mist, or else they couldn’t see it at all. But it was hard to tell, as after a moment Gray almost couldn’t see them as the room began to be obscured by white.

Ianto was staring back at him with wide eyes. “I don’t know if I can...” he grasped Gray’s arm, as though to try to pull him into another memory, but nothing happened. “It’s not working!” he gasped. “Why is it not working?”

“Let me try” said Gray. He concentrated, hand on Ianto’s wrist, and felt a flicker of apprehension; the mist was surrounding them now, blotting out everything with blank white. It felt like his very mind was fogging up from the inside, making it hard to think, the room gone from around them.

Gray gritted his teeth, letting out a sharp sound in the back of his throat as he forced his way through, pushing and pushing against the boundaries until-

-Something snapped, like a pin pushing through a sheet of rubber. The world suddenly ripped apart around them, sending them spiraling downwards together. He was aware of himself screaming, or Ianto screaming, or perhaps both of them, clinging to his arm as the torn ends of the fog unspooled from around them. But they were falling too fast for them to catch up, leaving that horrifying, snowblind blankness behind as they fell into a whorl of dark.

And then they were in a new place.

At first, Gray found himself dazzled by the brilliance of a sunrise, blazing pink over the water. For the briefest moment he thought they were back on the Boeshane Peninsula again, before he recognised the beaten metal beneath his feet, felt the bite of cold in the breeze, shivering and sticking his hands in his jacket pockets. Ianto seemed entirely unbothered by the cold, the light wind tugging at his hair and his tie as he looked around.

“We’re on the roof of the Millennium Centre” he said, looking curiously at Gray. “You brought us here? You escaped… whatever that fog was?”

“...I guess I did.”

“You said you hadn’t had any telepathic training.”

“You said you _had_.”

Ianto narrowed his eyes. “...Was that a joke?”

Gray kept his face absolutely straight. “It was an observation.”

For a moment, Ianto raised his eyebrows as though in disbelief, before he smiled, just slightly. “Okay, point taken. My telepathy’s a bit rusty, and besides, this is nothing like anything I tried to do at Torchwood One. That was mostly blocking psychic attacks, that sort of thing. Defensive, rather than...” he gestured. “Whatever this is.” He frowned, looking around. “Is this a memory? Did you – oh.”

He was looking behind Gray at the other side of the roof. And sure enough, Gray turned to see two figures climbing up, the one in the long coat giving the other his hand to help him up the last of the ladder.

Ianto smiled a bit wider. “He took you up here too, hmm?”

“A few times” said Gray. There had been long nights, early on after Gray had started living in the Hub, after he and Jack had used the box the first time, when sleep had eluded him. Since Jack didn’t sleep much either, they had sometimes encountered each other, and a few times they’d talked; it always felt easier in the quiet hours of the night. And sometimes they’d come up here, watching the sunrise. Gray had even done it on his own once or twice since then; the bright morning light on the water reminded him of home, in a way that didn’t pull the wrong way at the healing tear in his heart.

Ianto folded his arms as they watched Jack and Gray stand on the roof together, shoulder to shoulder in the rising wind, speaking in voices too low for either of them to hear.

“Gray...”

He was staring at them, but he was broken out of his reverie by Ianto, who was looking out over the water, pointing. Gray followed his gaze, and his eyes widened.

That fog again, rolling in from over the bay, too fast to be natural. Against the wind. It seemed thicker this time, cloying, obliterating anything in its wake. Instinctively, Gray’s hand reached out, catching Ianto’s sleeve as it hit the edge of the water, rolling over the Plass below. He wasn’t sure whether it was his imagination or whether he felt it, a blurring of his thoughts, a fogging over that was inside his head.

But beside him he heard Ianto gasp quietly, as though he’d felt it too. “Oh! It’s _him!_ ” Ianto whispered, clearing his throat and trying again as the fog approached. It was nearly upon the other versions of them now, at the other side of the roof. “Every memory with Jack in it!”

“What?”

Ianto’s eyes were wide, his mind clearly racing. “What if _that’s_ what’s keeping him trapped in his own mind?”

Gray’s eyes slipped to the fog, terror starting in his heart and rising up; there was something about it that made him desperately afraid of being lost in the cloud, of never finding his way out.

But Ianto was determined, his face set. “We need to let it take us.”

“... _What?_ ” Gray made to draw away, but Ianto had his arm now, holding him in place. “Ianto! We need to leave, we can’t let it touch us-”

Ianto’s arm was trembling against his; Gray could see he felt the same fear, the same aversion, but was pushing it down with all the strength in him. “It’s the only way we’ll find Jack!”

“You don’t know that!”

“No. I don’t.” Ianto set his jaw, his grip on Gray’s arm holding them in place as the fog rushed closer, its front already beginning to curl about them like ensnaring claws.

Gray gritted his teeth, grasping Ianto’s forearm back; if Ianto wasn’t going anywhere himself, then he’d pull them out of here, back to the real world to find Jack another way… there had to be another way, because he didn’t think he could do this one anymore. He pulled with his mind in the way he’d learned. But when he did he met with resistance; Ianto was pulling back the other way with equal strength, and as the fog curled around them they stayed in place, perfectly matched.

And then the fog was upon them, consuming the sky and the roof and even the chill of the air, all sensation ebbing away as they were drawn into blank whiteness, a too-bright void where even sensation faded. The two of them let go at the same moment, both of each others’ arms and of the telepathic pull between them. As the connection broke they both fell to the ground, landing on solidified nothingness in this empty place. Gray found himself gasping and immediately lurching onto his knees, on guard; his fear had not lessened with their landing. Ianto was picking himself up too, a little more slowly, breathing hard and staring around.

“What is this place?” Gray wondered aloud, voice falling dead.

Ianto shook his head, silent as he looked about. In every direction there was just too-bright white nothingness, textureless and blank; Gray didn’t even know what they were standing on, a very unsettling sensation. “Don’t know” said Ianto. “But I bet Jack’s here too.”

“Where, though?”

Ianto shrugged. “No idea, but we’ve got to start somewhere.” He pointed in a random direction. “How about over there?”

For a moment Gray stared, thinking back to his and Jack’s conversation of a few weeks ago, on a sleepless night; Gray had felt lost, desperate for something to cling to and Jack had told him something then that was striking in its similarity to Ianto’s words just now. _Start somewhere_.

He put the thought aside to consider later, jogging to catch up with Ianto as he walked away into the nothingness.

About an hour later – by Gray’s best guess, not that time seemed to mean much here – they had made several discoveries about this place. First, that the blankness was not, in fact, solid, but was made the colour it was by more of the thick mist they’d seen earlier; they knew this because when they separated by about a few hundred metres they began to lose sight of each other, forms growing misty in the distance as they disappeared into it. They’d stayed close to each other after that, neither liking the idea of getting lost in here. The other thing they’d found was that the ground seemed to be almost a solidified form of the same substance, somehow packed densely enough to stand on.

And so they searched. It could have been minutes, or it could have been hours, or even days for all Gray knew, and there was no way of telling if they were going in circles. But still they searched the white void, making sure to stay close together.

They didn’t speak much, but Gray found to his surprise that the silence between them wasn’t uncomfortable. Perhaps it would have been before, but now it just felt focused, and filled with some understanding that he couldn’t have put into words if he tried.

It was Ianto who broke the silence, nudging Gray’s arm and pointing. “Look! There!”

Gray’s eyes widened, following his pointing finger to see that there was indeed something else in the void with them. Starting as a speck in the distance, seeming to sharpen and get closer at a faster rate than the speed with which they were walking, with the way time stretched and bent in here.

As they came close it became a human figure, and as they came closer still, it became familiar.

There was Jack, lying sprawled on his back on the misty ground. But he didn’t look as he had when they’d last seen him. Gray came around to his other side as Ianto dropped down on his knees beside him, staring at him wide-eyed at the disturbing picture before them.

Jack’s form seemed to be drawn of colour, like a photograph with too much light, the brightness leeched from his skin, hair and clothes. His eyes were open, staring upwards, lifeless and empty.

But the most striking and disturbing part of the scene was strange, pallid plant, growing out of his body; its thick main stem protruded from its tap root embedded in his chest, exactly where his heart was. Subsidiary tendrils were curled all around him, emerging from his nose and mouth. Its stems were pale, bone-white and etiolated, growing up as though reaching for the light. At the apex of the main stem was a flower, of sorts; it looked like the fuzzy sphere of a dandelion, though larger, pulsing and glowing softly white. From it came a silent, constant stream of fluffy seeds, borne on a wind that Gray couldn’t feel against his skin and disappearing into the mist.

Ianto was staring up at it, clearly coming to the same conclusion as he was. “It’s coming from _here_?”

“Seems so” said Gray, staring at the clouds of drifting seeds.

“Then this is what’s keeping Jack trapped” said Ianto, nodding at the plant choking Jack. “We just need to… uh... get it out of him, I suppose?”

Gray knelt down on Jack’s other side. “How?”

“Um. Pull?”

Gray stared at him. “And what if it traps us too?”

Ianto held his gaze, defiant and unyielding. “Then it traps us too.”

Gray opened his mouth and closed it again.

Ianto sighed. “Look. I’m going to try this, and I’m going to do it with or without your help. …But given the choice, my preference would be with.”

Gray stared down at Jack’s face, the way the life was gone from his eyes, the colour with it. The thick stem growing through his windpipe and out from between his lips, setting his mouth slightly open in a horrible parody of life, as though he were just about to speak.

He remembered how in that dark place, for all those years, all he’d wanted to do was to watch his brother hurt, to watch him die. How it had kept him going, kept him alive. How, despite all he’d done, somehow Jack had shown him such kindness. A deep, clear well of forgiveness that Gray knew he hadn’t really done anything to earn.

 _Yet_.

He breathed out and reached out across Jack’s chest to the stem of the plant, hands meeting Ianto’s as they both pulled it up by the roots.

Except it was _difficult_ ; it was rooted deeply in Jack’s chest, entwined through his body – or whatever the equivalent was in this mind-space – and refusing to budge. Ianto’s teeth were gritted as he grunted with the effort. Gray put all his strength into it too; there was more resistance than there should have been. Across from him Ianto’s eyes were squeezed closed with the strain, and a moment later he let out a gasp of pain, hands almost faltering on the stem.

A moment after that, Gray understood why.

The vision came with the speed and ferocity of a physical impact. This time, it wasn’t like standing by and watching his past self either; he was seeing it through his own eyes, the verisimilitude exact, but with no control over what he was doing.

He was standing by a freshly-dug grave, watching Jack lower himself down into the earth.

It was strange; he remembered it exactly, the smell in the air and the earth, the feeling of vicious triumph racing through his veins at the idea of making him _suffer_ , dying over and over again until he paid for leaving Gray to _them_. He even felt a little of it now, imprisoned in his old self’s flesh and watching it play out before his eyes.

And yet at the same time that curl of triumph repulsed him; it _hurt_ , draining him where before it had fueled him. It burned like a brand to the skin, making him spasm and gasp in pain at the backdraft of old emotions. It was enough to shock him back to the moment, eyes blinking open to feel his hands wrenching at the stem, and opposite him, Ianto gasping for breath, pale, trembling and sweating, eyes wide and blank with horror.

Briefly, Gray wondered what Ianto had seen. But there was no time to wonder, as Ianto’s grip slipped and for a moment, just a moment, he took the whole force of it himself. His own grasp nearly faltered, but then Ianto was holding on again, drawing the stem out of Jack’s chest inch by inch.

And then all at once it was free, coming out of Jack’s heart in a thick gout of tarry black sap rather than blood. The remaining tendrils ensnaring Jack’s body began to shrivel, and so did the stem as Ianto flung it away in disgust; the broken pieces curled and writhed like paper in a fire, turning grey and then black, stark against the white surroundings before they too dissolved to nothing, blown on the same non-existent wind.

And the wind had begun to rise again, tugging their hair and clothes in a chaotic eddy, becoming a vast whirlpool centred on the three of them. It sucked Gray’s breath away before he could draw it into his lungs, and all he could do was gasp, holding on to Jack’s hand and twisting a grip in his clothes, even as Ianto did the same.

The wind had risen so high they couldn’t have shouted over it even if they’d had enough breath for words. It was starting to tear reality ragged: the mist was blowing away in tendrils, stripped back by the maelstrom.

And behind it, a whirl of colour. Memories, Gray realised, at the same time as he saw Ianto tilt his head back, staring up at them with wide eyes.

They weren’t his memories though, Gray knew instinctively even though most of them were only smears of colour, whirling by too fast to see. They were Jack’s; lifetimes and lifetimes of memories suddenly freed from their prison of cloying mist.

And sometimes, Gray was able to glimpse one as it flew past; the glimpses weren’t only visual, either. He could feel, smell, hear, such as their frenetic dance allowed, flashes of sensation and emotion like lightning striking down his spinal column and directly into his brain, suffusing him briefly before being wrenched away and replaced by another.

_Dying, the first time, jolting awake and knowing, before full understanding came, that he was all alone._

_Dying again and again; lead pistol shot at twenty paces, alcohol poisoning, trampled under a horse’s hooves. A few decades later, the reek of mustard gas burning his throat, collapsing to the wet mud, shrapnel ripping through soft flesh amongst a press of bodies. Flares burning white phosphorus lines across his field of vision. Flying a plane across an expanse of ocean, tilting towards the ground as he was hit, spiraling down to the waves. Machine gun fire, clattering too-loud in his head. All the deaths even after the war was over; but the war was never over, not really. Not for Jack. Shot and stabbed and blow up, choking on poisonous fumes or drowning in icy salt water. Buried in the ground and going to it willingly, the scent of earth and the cold choking blackness pressing in. Others that he’d failed to save; coming into the Hub and seeing his team - his friends, his family – lying bleeding on the grating floor, one new year’s night._

_But it wasn’t all war, not all dying. There was so much life too; laughing around the table with friends, the smell of cooking food and the echo of laughter rebounding off the high ceiling. The warm encompassing feeling of love, running to shelter from the rain with a woman Gray didn’t recognise, laughing themselves breathless. Steam curling up from a ceramic coffee cup on a cold morning. Holding a newborn child, so small and delicate in a world so large, filled with so much cruelty._

_Kissing Ianto under the dim lights of the archives, fingers whispering against silk as they undid his tie, the rolling hitch of emotion in his chest; love and affection, upset and preparation for the worse. Guarding his heart, but not wanting to. Raging against the unfairness of it all, the fact that he was going to lose Ianto and it was ruining him, ruining his ability to give Ianto the love he deserved._

Gray pulled himself out of the vision, a little embarrassed; out of everything he’d seen today, that one seemed the most like an intrusion, the raw, trembling emotion of it overwhelming. But now, seeing through Jack's eyes, he finally understood. He stared across at Ianto, who seemed still to be lost in Jack’s memories, tears running down his face apparently without his notice. The whirlwind of life lived was spinning faster and faster around them, turning into a turbulent current, a vortex that threatened to sweep them away.

At that moment, Jack flinched back to life, sitting up between them and grasping both their arms. As he did, the world dissolved around them, tumbling away in a chaotic torrent of colour and life and time before all turned to blackness.

But only for a moment. Gray gasped as he found himself deposited painfully back in the real world, struggling for his balance as the world spun for a few nauseating moments before righting itself.

When it did, he realised they were back where they started. Back in the Hub, he and Ianto lying on the floor on opposite sides of Jack, who was sitting up between them; somehow no longer on the bed he’d been laid out on, but in the middle of the floor, though Gray had no idea how that had happened. Gray pulled himself up until he was kneeling, leaning against Jack’s left shoulder even as Ianto did the same on his right. To his surprise Gray found himself laughing, his face wet with tears as Jack leaned down and wrapped one arm around Ianto, pressing a firm kiss to his forehead.

Jack’s face went soft, eyes closed, and for a moment and he lingered there, lips pressed to Ianto’s skin. Ianto’s eyes were closed too, leaning back into Jack’s embrace, and for just an instant, Gray saw exactly what they were to one other, clearer than anything else he’d witnessed tonight. He only realised he was staring when Jack opened his eyes, letting Ianto go and turning to face him. He looked at Gray, eyebrows raised as though asking permission. Gray stayed frozen for a moment, before he cautiously nodded. Equally carefully – like the bond that ran between them was a little tender still, like a newly-healed wound – Gray let Jack loop the arm that wasn’t holding Ianto around the back of his neck, pulling his head firmly against his chest; Gray could feel Jack’s heartbeat through the contact, and a moment later he felt Jack press a kiss to the very crown of his head, pulling him and Ianto in closer.

For a while they just stayed like that; after a moment, Gray opened his eyes against Jack’s chest and glimpsed Ianto’s face pressed down against his other shoulder, doing the same. Their eyes met between them, sharing a look that held an understanding in it.

Gray let his arm come up around Jack’s back. As it did, he felt his fingers brush Ianto’s, the two of them holding onto Jack between them.

A moment later, Gray started in alarm as the klaxon sounded, the cog door rolling open. They all looked up as Owen, Tosh and Gwen ran into the medbay, guns drawn, fanning out around the three of them on the floor.

“Jack!” gasped Tosh. “You’re awake...” she looked between Ianto and Gray. “What happened?”

“We saw the CCTV upstairs” said Gwen. “The three of you were unconscious on the floor two minutes ago!”

But Owen had spotted the box lying open on the floor, and sighed. “ _That_ thing again?” he gave Jack an accusatory look, lowering his gun. “Is this gonna be a regular occurrence then?”

“Hey, don’t look at me, it was these two that used it to bring me back” said Jack, squeezing Ianto and Gray closer to his sides. Gray tried to avoid everyone’s eyes, but Toshiko, it seemed, wouldn’t allow this, meeting his gaze and then Ianto’s and smiling wide.

“Well, it looks like that’s sorted then. We should-”

But at that moment, Jack held up a hand, chest convulsing in a cough; Gray stared at him in alarm, unsure what to do as Ianto looked equally alarmed. Jack coughed again, and out of his mouth drifted a single, fluffy dandelion seed, floating in the air in front of him.

But not for long; before anyone could do anything, Owen was there with a plastic containment vessel, expertly catching the seed and closing the lid, sealing it away.

He tapped the side of the vessel as Gwen came to peer over his shoulder, and Toshiko over his other, all of them watching the seed bump gently against the side of the vessel, as though trying to get out.

“That’s it” said Ianto, grimacing. “That must be what’s left of the thing that was doing this...”

Owen sighed, looking around at the scene. “Well, I assume there’s a good explanation for all this. As long as it’s actually all over now…?”

Jack grinned, extricating himself from between the two of them to pull himself to his feet. “Yeah. I think it is.”

And as the rest of them began to mill around, talking over each other as they tidied up, Gray’s gaze met Ianto’s for a brief moment, and they shared a small smile.

* * *

“Psychic dandelion” said Owen, pacing in front of the boardroom table and gesturing to a sheaf of printouts. Hours had passed and it was now evening again, which was a mild surprise to Gray because it meant he and Ianto must have been in Jack’s memories for hours longer than he’d thought. Most of the day had been spent with Jack, Gray and Ianto giving statements on what had happened to add to the records, but now the team were all grouped around the table in the boardroom, sharing several large pizzas as they listened to Owen’s summary briefing.

“...Your basic telepathic feeding alien flora. Previously documented by Torchwood operatives at Chrysanthemum House conservatory in August of nineteen eleven, according to the file Ianto dug up in the archives.”

Jack smacked his forehead. “I _knew_ it rang a bell!”

Owen continued. “...Usually feeds off its victim’s memories, drawing the energy it needs to live from the information stored there until it just… drains their life away, and they die. But in Jack’s case, all I can think is there were so _many_ memories it had a bloody field day. And it couldn’t actually kill him, so it just kept feeding off him at the same rate he was replenishing his life-force.”

“Or maybe I just taste that good” said Jack cheerily, with a wink at Ianto that earned him several disappointed looks from around the table.

“... _Anyway_ ” said Owen, “point is, we’ve got the bastard locked up in a sample jar in cold storage now.”

“And Ianto and Gray saved the day” added Jack, beaming proudly as he looked between the two of them.

“I suppose we did” said Ianto slowly, while Gray drew back a little under the scrutiny of their gazes. But he met their gazes and nodded, just slightly.

“Well then” said Owen, clasping his hands together. “All that’s done now, I guess. And the Rift’s supposed to be quiet all the rest of the week, so… celebratory pub trip?”

“Bloody fantastic idea” said Gwen. “Rhys is out of town and all, so it would’ve been just me and my reheated pasta at home.”

“Oh, well we can’t have that” said Ianto.

“Hey” said Jack, half-grinning. “I’m the boss, I have to okay any bunking off that’s gonna happen.”

Owen raised his eyebrows. “Well, _boss_ , do you okay it?”

Jack laughed. “Yeah, sure. We’re celebrating the heroes of the hour after all.” He looked between Gray and Ianto again.

Owen nodded, as the rest of them began to push their chairs out, already beginning to weigh up their nearby pub choices.

Gray made to walk out of the room when he heard Jack’s voice behind him. “Not coming?”

Gray turned around and blinked at him. “Uh...” he hadn’t been outside the Hub since he’d been here, except a few times when he and Jack had gone up on the roof. He was sure the others wouldn’t want him there.

Jack must’ve seen the fast race of his thoughts behind his eyes, because he put his hand on his shoulder. “Like I said… hero of the hour. One of them, anyway.” He turned and looked at Ianto where he was speaking to Gwen in the corner, his expression full of fondness, before turning back to Gray. “C’mon” he said. “It’ll do you good to get out of here for once.”

“...Okay” Gray found himself saying, before he could think better of it.

* * *

The pub was packed, people jostling by the bar as Ianto helped Tosh carry their drinks over to their cramped table. Gray had been to bars before of course, during his time with John, but this felt different; less a place for deals in the dark, for trading secrets and weapons, more a place to relax with a group of friends. Not that he really felt part of it, no matter how closely he was squeezed in amongst them.

But as they talked, laughing at Jack’s stories that may even have been true, and as he listened, he found himself relaxing just a fraction.

And now it was an hour later and the room was starting to grow warm and loud with the press of people all around them. Despite this though, their little table had emptied out, with Toshiko and Owen going off arm in arm to the pool table in the corner for a game – and she’d promised to teach Gray the rules some day – and Jack and Gwen at the bar getting another round.

Which left Gray and Ianto together for the first time since they’d emerged from Jack’s memories. Ianto was currently staring off thoughtfully at the bar, but a moment later he turned and gave Gray a small smile. “I didn’t say before, but… thanks.”

Gray blinked, frowning slightly.

“Your plan worked” Ianto elaborated, swirling the last bit of beer at the bottom of his pint glass around. “...And even if I’d thought of it myself, I couldn’t have pulled it off alone.”

“Uh” said Gray. He didn’t know what else to say. “Well.” He wanted to say it was nothing, that he still had so much to repay, so many things to fix. But he didn’t know how.

Luckily, Ianto saved him from having to say anymore by raising his glass, looking at Gray as though waiting for something. Gray stared back, unsure.

“You’re supposed to-” said Ianto, taking his glass and clinking it against Gray’s.

“...Oh!” Gray flushed.

“...Cheers.”

They clinked glasses awkwardly, but when it was done they were both smiling.

And when Jack and Gwen came back – Jack throwing one arm around his shoulders and the other around Ianto’s, Gwen talking on the phone with a small, fond smile on her face – and then Toshiko and Owen, laughing together at something or other, then he felt himself relax even more, leaning back in his seat.

There was still so much he didn’t know, so much he didn’t understand about these people, this world, the thought that he could have a life here.

But perhaps today he understood a little more than he had yesterday.

Perhaps tomorrow, he thought, he’d understand a little more again.

**Author's Note:**

> DVD commentary: Nik's original prompt(s) that inspired this were 1) Gray using Adam's box to look at Jack's memories again like in chapter 4, and 2) Gray and Ianto bonding, and 3) a pub trip with Gray, Ianto, and Owen. Having decided to smoosh these together, I quickly decided that I wanted to do a story set early on in Gray's arc in Just this once, beginning with Gray not really understanding Ianto or what attracted Jack to him, and ending up with him like "yeah, no I totally get it actually", and learning more about Jack and how he is now as distinct from the brother he knew in the process. Then I decided to add eldritch plant horrors (as one does) and this sort of grew from there? It didn't really turn out like I was expecting, but I hope it was enjoyable anyway, and that it fits in well with the rest of the AU in terms of characterisation.  
> Anyway, thank you for reading! And once again, happy birthday Nik!


End file.
